Blender 4.1 Released With Major Geometry Nodes and Rendering Improvements

The Blender Foundation has released Blender 4.1, featuring a significantly expanded geometry nodes system, faster Cycles rendering, and a new real-time viewport compositor. Geometry nodes, Blender's procedural modeling system, has been extended with new simulation nodes that allow artists to create physics-based effects — fluid, cloth, and particle simulations — entirely within the node graph without writing code. The Cycles rendering engine has been optimized for both CPU and GPU rendering, with benchmarks showing 15–30% faster render times on common scenes compared to Blender 4.0. The new viewport compositor allows artists to apply post-processing effects like bloom, depth of field, and color grading directly in the 3D viewport in real time, reducing the need to switch to the full compositor for preview work. Blender 4.1 is available as a free download for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The Blender Foundation is funded by corporate sponsors and individual donations.